School Bus Bill Would Require Flashing Lights : Safety: Parents of boy killed crossing street prompt Bergeson’s proposed legislation to stop traffic whenever children are disembarking.

Reacting to the death of a 7-year-old boy struck by a pickup truck as he got off a school bus in Laguna Niguel, an Orange County lawmaker is preparing a bill to make bus drivers flash warning lights requiring traffic to stop whenever children are disembarking.

Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) said Monday she plans to introduce the measure later this week in hopes of changing the current law, which requires that warning lights be activated only if the bus driver believes children will be crossing the street.

Thomas E. Lanni was killed on April 22 while crossing Aliso Niguel in front of a stopped school bus, according to authorities. The bus’ warning lights were not flashing. At least three of the children who disembarked at the stop live on the other side of the street, but the bus driver told investigators he was unaware any would be crossing to get home, authorities said.

Lanni’s family had just moved to the area from New York. It was only his second day of school and he was riding the bus for the first time. The boy got off the bus one stop too early, apparently by mistake, then was hit as he tried to cross to a gated housing complex that he probably believed was his neighborhood.

Bergeson met last week with the boy’s father, Thomas W. Lanni, who asked that the senator sponsor the legislation. The child’s parents say they plan to push hard to see that the bill becomes law.

“There’s no money in the world that is ever going to bring back my little boy,” said Barbara Lanni, the child’s mother. “We just want to make sure that no other family has to go through what we have.”

Bergeson said she was moved by the family’s pleas and hoped to propel the bill quickly through the legislative process.

“It’s unfortunate that it takes a tragedy of this type to get us to look at changing the law,” Bergeson said. “One would hope that when children’s lives are concerned, we would err on the side of caution.”

Under existing law, all cars must stop and wait when the warning lights on a school bus are activated, but the driver is required to turn on the flashing red signals only when a student will be crossing the street. In addition, the driver must escort all pupils in preschool through the eighth grade and carry a hand-held “STOP” sign to alert approaching vehicles.

Bergeson’s bill would require drivers to activate the warning lights at all bus stops, even those where no children are expected to cross a street.

However, she said, one potential sticking point could be the effect of the proposed law on traffic. Law enforcement authorities might balk at the use of the warning lights on crowded multilane thoroughfares where the flashing warning lights could cause congestion or accidents.

But such arguments drew the ire of the boy’s father.

“That is ridiculous,” said Lanni, an electrical engineer. “What situation could be more life threatening than a child leaving a school bus? I don’t care if the bus stops on the 405 Freeway--those flashing lights should be turned on. If it’s an inappropriate place because of heavy traffic, they should move the school bus stop someplace safer.”

Aside from a blanket requirement that the warning lights be used at all school bus stops, Lanni said he would like to see a law requiring that school districts adopt safety procedures for bus drivers, improve safety training and carefully monitor driver adherence to the rules. He would also like to see a requirement that all school buses be equipped with flip-out stop signs, which are deployed when the bus stops to let off children.

“It’s almost like common sense,” Lanni said. “It’s hard to imagine that here we are in 1994 and these kinds of things aren’t already in place. A simple law requiring that school buses have flashing lights when they stop might have been enough to save my son’s life.”

The parents filed a $10-million claim with the Capistrano Unified School District after the boy’s death, but the push for changes in state law has nothing to do with the case against the school district, they said.

“At the very least, we feel we owe it to our son’s memory to get the law changed,” Thomas Lanni said. “I don’t think we could live with ourselves if another child got killed the same way and we hadn’t done something about it.”